Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host, Jason Palmer. Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

An intriguing pattern has been spotted among the most severe cases of COVID-19.

There aren't as many smokers as you'd expect to see.

Something in tobacco smoke may be providing protection, and studies into that just might lead to treatments.

And tonight would have been the annual gathering of A-Lister's at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The Met Gala's postponement allows time to reflect on the museum's history,

its troubled finances, and whether it serves all art lovers equally.

First up, though,

Over the past week, Nigeria has seen a sharp rise in coronavirus infections.

Nevertheless, today Africa's biggest economy will start lifting some of the strict lockdown measures put in place a month ago.

President Muhammadu Buhari said that while the country's shutdown had been effective at containing the spread, it's come with a heavy economic cost.

No country can afford the full impact of a sustained lockdown while awaiting the development of vaccines.

Many African leaders face tradeoffs that differ from those governing policies elsewhere,

determining whether flattening the curve flattened economies in a way that's more harmful

even than the pandemic.

Nigeria is quite complicated.

Jonathan Rosenthal is our Africa editor.

When it first went into its COVID lockdowns,

it only imposed it on two of the major cities,

and those were Lagos, which is this bustling commercial capital,

you know, on the coast of about 21 million people,

and then on the political capital, Abuja,

...